Harry Potter and the First Pokemon
by Montenya of the Fairies
Summary: In a world where Pokemon are everywhere, there is a small town where pokemon are not allowed. There, on a street just like all the others, is a little boy who feels inexorably drawn to the beasts he only remembers in his wildest dreams. But how will he cope when he, for the first time in years, comes face to face with one?
1. Harry and the Black and Blue Thing

Harry James Potter was five years old. He knew this for exactly one reason: last week was the start of kindergarten. And wasn't that a series of revelations! He had a last and middle name, an age, theoretically a birthday, and… well, that was about it really. But still.

However, the rest of school had not gone nearly as well. The teacher thought he was lying about not knowing his name and made him stand in the corner for ten minutes. Which wasn't that bad, really, except that he kept on being sent back. If it wasn't for being unable to read what was on the board it was because he didn't have the proper materials. If it wasn't for that it was because he'd tried to blame poor Dudley—his "innocent" cousin—for tripping poor Lisa when it was obviously him—never mind that he'd been on the other side of the room at the time!

And every morning when he was dropped off Aunt Petunia had a long chat with the teacher, during which both would not together and glare at him out of the corner of their eyes.

School wasn't all bad, though. He liked learning, and having lunch every day, and not having chores, and his name. He really liked his name; so much so, in fact, that he'd taken to naming everything. The mailbox of Number 4 Privet Lane was dubbed George, the tree which loomed over the garden in the backyard was Jim, and each of the slats in the white picket fence which lined the property had their own name: Rob, Bob, Job, Gob… (he had decided they should all rhyme, irrespective of if the names were actually real).

Harry was currently in the backyard. He'd been sent out there hours earlier—it was Saturday—to weed, but nobody'd come to let him back in. To pass the time he'd begun searching for more things to name. There was a twig (Hilton), a berry (Irene), and a stone (Ralph) so far. Harry meandered further into the yard—maybe there was more things to name near the fence! As he neared, he thought he heard a noise. Quietly, the little boy dropped to his hands and knees and rounded the bush that stood between him and the keening noise. There, sticking out of a hole in the fence, was a blue head. It had two ears on either side, with yellowish insides that reminded Harry of the color of lightning. It managed to wriggle in two paws, and then another two and a tail. The back end of the animal was black and on the tail was a star-shaped thing about the same color as the ears.

"Hello." Harry said. "I'll name you Bolt."


	2. Harry and the Mystery of the Meat

Only a few short days after Harry and his new best friend first met, an unfortunate truth became clear for the little boy. Bolt was hungry. Each of the tiny creature's ribs could be counted more easily than Harry's own, and the poor thing kept on attempting to eat the grass and dirt that littered the lawn. While it had actually improved significantly after eating the blue Oran berries that grew in some of the scattered bushes that dotted the yard, that had not been good for Harry himself because Aunt Petunia believed that it was him who had 'destroyed all of her wonderful work on her garden!' (This despite him never having seen her pick up a shovel or a watering pail beyond to hit him with them.) That unfortunate misunderstanding, that the five year old was unwilling to clear up, meant that Harry had spent two days in the cupboard, and by the time he got out again Bolt was back to clawing at the ground.

Something, Harry decided in that determined way that only children were able to truly pull off, had to be done. But what was there to do? The food in the house was carefully monitored, as were the cafeteria meals at school.

His chance came on an unremarkable Thursday. He'd been placed in the corner for the entirety of math class and recess, but he had been able to participate in class for the rest of the day and had even finished learning his letters—well ahead of the majority of his classmates despite being unable to read the board. On the way back home, though, the day took an interesting turn. Dudley, who had been lumbering behind, apparently annoyed over his bad score on the math quiz, tripped over a tree root in the road. His knee scraped, and he stared at it for a few seconds before opening his mouth and screaming.

To understand the significance of that one first must understand that from the moment Dudley was born he was treated as if he was the holy messiah himself. His every need was catered for as one would that of a czar, and even the slightest hint that he might be upset was treated as if it was the coming of the apocalypse.

By the time Dudley was two he was fully aware of this and he was also fully aware of how to take advantage of it. If he wanted some cake he would ask. If that didn't immediately give him what he wanted, all he had to do was scream. Over the course of the rest of his very young life he perfected this technique until his every interaction with his parents was built to extract as much from them as possible.

This perfection included the perfection of screaming. To this day Harry had no idea how his cousin was able to produce such a noise at such a volume for such a long length of time. It was, Harry thought, an unholy mixture of the wail of a siren, the screech of nails across a chalkboard, and the noise level of an entire cafeteria of starving school children.

So, when Dudley began to make his earsplitting yowl, his poor mother was of course in a rush to calm him. So much in a rush, in fact, that rather than walk the final three blocks home to treat the graze, Aunt Petunia instead hurried her poor baby, with Harry trailing behind, to the urgent care center that was only a block away.

First Dudley, then Petunia entered the center, but before Harry could follow the door slammed. For a few seconds Harry stood there, debating if he would get in trouble for entering, before he turned around and looked at the rest of the street.

The urgent care center was located in the commercial district of Little Whinging, the town that the Dursleys and Harry himself lived in. It was, by all respects, a rather large commercial district, with any number of gadgets sold on every corner. There was an entire store dedicated to game boys and the like, and another to television sets. Harry knew this because he would occasionally be made to accompany Dudley and Aunt Petunia on shopping trips. However, as Harry stood gazing at the street now, he realized that there were some stores that he'd never been in, the most prominent of which was Tom's Grocery, which stood one store over across the street.

Harry had never been to this store because Dudley had never had reason to go. Whenever food shopping had needed to be done, it was done on the weekend with Uncle Vernon ready to baby his son and act as guard to his nephew. This meant that what Harry knew of any grocery store was what he'd heard from Aunt Petunia's gossip—"Can you believe they raised the price of Hondew berries? The gall of them!" or Mrs. 11 Privet Drive's (Harry had, admittedly, never bothered to learn the woman's actual name) response—"You think that's bad? I went there just two days ago and all of the apples were rotted! Rotted I tell you! I have no idea how they stay in business—it took me ten minutes to cut off all of that disgusting brown from the apples. Not that I made a complaint, mind you—I am a lady."

Regardless, Harry's preliminary knowledge was enough to know that grocery stores had food. So as he stood outside the urgent care center he had a sort of train of thought that went like this: 'That is a grocery store. Grocery stores have food—that's where Aunt Petunia gets all the food I cook with. Bolt needs food. Let's see what's inside.'

The inside of the store was bustling with people. Moms with kids rushed to the snack aisle while solo bachelors stacked up on the brown bottles at the end of one of the rows. Couples picked up heart shaped balloons at the front of the store while teenagers trudged through the store, filling up a shopping cart while staring at a list. Harry was in awe. He spent the next few minutes looking around and marveling at the sights before him, mission entirely forgotten, until he reached the left end of the store. There, under a giant sign that said M-E-A-T-S, sat rows and rows of red blobs, the like of which Harry had never seen in his house.

After a surreptitious check to make sure no one was watching, Harry snuck closer. A few meters down a man and a women were looking at the packages and talking to each other, and the young boy wanted to hear what they were saying.

"Personally I prefer the meat that comes from Pokemon that eat other Pokemon, like Arcanine. I think it adds a depth of flavor."

"Really? I've always preferred the Pokémon meat that comes from those that live in the water, like Basculin. I've never thought of the difference that their diet could make. Regardless, all Pokémon are man-eaters given the chance, so wouldn't there be no difference?"

"I guess… and to be fair, I only think Pokemon like Deerling don't eat other Pokemon because that's what the butcher told me. It doesn't really matter, so long as they're dead and in my stomach."

The couple laughed and put a few packages in their cart and moved away. Harry moved closer. He'd never seen this 'meat' before, though based on the couple's conversation it was edible. What interested him most was when they said that Pokemon could eat it. Was that what Bolt was? Was he an Arcanine or a Deerling or a different kind of Pokemon?

Tentatively, slowly, Harry reached his hand out, towards one of the meat packages. He couldn't read the label, but it looked about the same as the ones the couple had grabbed. But just as his hands were about to close in on it they flinched back. The couples conversation replayed in the little boy's mind.

What if… what if this 'Pokemon meat' was dead Pokemon? What if the package he had been about to take was dead Bolt?

Harry felt queasy and backed away. When the packaged red blobs were sufficiently far away, he turned and speed walked to the other end of the store. He ducked under one of the tables there, it thankfully had drapes which would hide him from sight, and took a few deep breaths.

He'd have to do more research before ever going near meat again, but he had the uneasy feeling he was right.


	3. Harry and the Ethical Dilemma

His decision to avoid one particularly revolting section of the store made, Harry calmed down and peeked out from under the drapes of the table, questioning whether he should just call it a day.

Unfortunately, there was still the matter of Bolt's hunger, and Dudley was likely almost done with getting sufficient attention from the doctor to stop crying. Harry would have to act fast. Cautiously the boy crept out from under the table and stood. Thankfully, there wasn't that many people in this area of the store. They mostly seemed to frequent the aisles in the middle. He turned to the rest of the area.

It was fairly clear that here was where the berries were kept. Harry knew all about these—there were a few plants in the backyard that produced berries, and his Aunt Petunia was always buying various kinds and showing them off at her gardening club. She also ate quite a few of them herself, particularly the Belue berry because it was supposed to make her more beautiful. Harry didn't think it was working.

As he gazed about the area the boy's eyes lit on something. There, between the red and yellow Leppa berries and the pure yellow Sitrus berries were the blue Oran berries that Bolt had so delighted in a week ago.

Based on their number and the size of the baskets holding them, not one of the berries was popular—Harry only knew their names because of Aunt Petunia's gardening club—but Bolt had seemed to like the blue one well enough. Harry reached out and grabbed one. It was firm, just like those on the plant at home, and fit neatly in his hand. He quickly dumped it into his backpack, before freezing.

Stealing, he knew, was wrong. He was punished for it often enough, even though he had never taken anything before. So could he really take the berry? The little boy hovered for a few seconds, unsure of himself and a bit scared as he glanced to the nearest clerk (helping a customer) and the door (Dudley not in sight), before decisively nodding and grabbing another to stuff in his backpack. While punishment was a genuine worry, he would likely be punished anyway, so it wasn't that much of a deterrent. And anyway, Bolt needed the berries. Harry was sure Tom would understand.

After grabbing three Oran berries as well as a Leppa and a Sitrus berry Harry slipped out of the shop and jogged across the street, before standing in front of the clinic again. Only a few seconds afterwards his cousin and aunt came out of the neighboring gaming shop, with Dudley holding a new box for what looked like a game boy cartridge.

"There you are, snookums, see? No reason to cry. Everything's all right now." His aunt said. She looked exhausted.

Dudley sniffled once more for effect, before grinning and ordering his mother to read the package. Harry managed to slip behind them without notice, and grinned as he did so. Thursdays were now his favorite day of the week.


	4. Harry and the Book on Bolt

The berries pilfered from the grocery had done wonders for Bolt's health. The Leppa berry was by far the creature's favorite, even though it seemed to do the least to improve its health and was the smallest. The rest of the week passed without comment, and with careful rationing of the berries because Harry didn't know when he'd be able to get more.

But today was Monday, and he was excited. The Friday before his teacher had informed the class that they would be visiting the library for the first time, and as a special treat would be allowed to use 'Read-Alouds', which were devices that would read the text you aimed them at out loud. They'd been shown one that day, and it was a thin box about the size of a Game Boy with head phones sticking out of one side and a light that shown from another and created a blue box on whatever surface it was aimed at. The teacher informed them that the device could only read the words in the box.

The morning had even started out well. He and his aunt labored in the kitchen making waffles for the rest of the family, while a Cornn berry salad was tossed together for Aunt Petunia. Harry got bread and a bit of leftover soup from a couple of days ago that no one else would eat, which was significantly more than his usual breakfast of nothing.

After being dropped off at school—Aunt Petunia, had, thankfully, stopped talking to the teacher every day about how horrible Harry was—the skinny boy and his fat cousin made their way to class.

The entire time Harry was all but bouncing up and down in excitement. The second he'd heard about the Read-Alouds he'd immediately had a goal in mind. Find out if Bolt was a Pokemon. From what he'd been able to tell at Tom's Grocery, his family was fairly unique in their lack of meat in the kitchen. At the very least, the meat section of the store seemed significantly more popular than the berries section.

Because of that, Harry thought that the society in general may know enough about Pokemon that he might be able to find out something about them in the library, but that Thursday he'd resigned himself to waiting for a few months if not years until he could read well enough. This opportunity, however, was exactly what he needed.

After taking attendance the teacher led the class of eager five year-olds down the hallway to the large room near the center of the building that made up the library. It was one of the largest rooms in the school, and was divided into multiple sections through the liberal use of bookcases. The teacher took the time to point out where the fiction and nonfiction sections were, as well as where the books for their age group could be found. Harry listened attentively and then stood in line to get his Read-Aloud, but when it got to be his turn the teacher didn't hand it to him with a smile as she had with the rest of the children.

"If even so much of a scratch ends up on this device you'll be in the corner for the rest of the year. I know your type and if you think you can get away with acting out you're wrong. I have to give this to you but I am not happy about it." She glared at him for a few more seconds before reluctantly putting the Read-Aloud within arm's reach of the boy. Harry tried to grab it but it took a few yanks until she let go. He skittered behind a nearby bookcase, glad to be out of her sight.

Now hidden, he settled the headphones over his ears and played with the device a bit until he understood how it worked. Then, after glancing around the bookcase to ensure the teacher was still distracted (another boy had accidently stepped on one of the girls' arms, and the teacher had to deal with the fallout) he carefully slipped into the nonfiction section and went to the back, where the books for older children were located.

Once there Harry began to slowly run the device over every book that started with P. It took 17 tries but he eventually found one that said Pokemon. He pulled out the book—it was called 'The Dangers of Pokemon'—and began flipping through it. Unfortunately it only took a few pages for Harry to realize that this book wouldn't work—there were no pictures and using the Read-Aloud would take too long. Reluctantly, he put it back. Thankfully, the very next book was also about Pokemon, so he grabbed that one: 'Deadly Pokemon'.

It had pictures. Harry grinned and began flipping. All sorts of Pokemon were pictured—some had stripes, others had branches sticking out of their heads, others looked giant compared to their surroundings. Eventually, over halfway through the book, Harry found a picture of a Pokemon with a black main but a blue upper body with many tiny Bolts around it.

Quickly, he grabbed the Read-Aloud and aimed it over the passage.

" _The Luxray. Incredibly dangerous, the Luxray line uses electricity to kill both humans and other Pokemon. Like many other Pokemon, its children have an innate knowledge of how to fight, and they will fight to kill. The Luxray line has three stages, or evolutions. Shinx is the first, followed by Luxio, followed by the fully grown Luxray. While, like all other Pokemon, Luxray are dangerous, the electricity which courses through their body makes them a hassle to eat, meaning that there is no use keeping them alive whatsoever._

Harry stared at the lines of words that the Read-Aloud had just recited. That… was not what he expected. Bolt wasn't aggressive at all! He'd never tried to kill Harry. But then, the couple in the Grocery had talked about how all Pokemon should be dead too. Quickly, he used the read aloud on random passages, hoping to find more information.

Harry had no idea what to do—everything that he could find said that Pokemon, including Bolt, were deadly. But his actual experience with the Shinx showed something completely different. Would Bolt get deadlier as he aged? Was his friendliness only a front? Who was he supposed to believe?

The teacher called out, and Harry shook himself free of his panic, reminding himself that what the book said wasn't important. _It wasn't_. He knew that Bolt was good. Right?

When Harry was sent to the yard that afternoon he shooed Bolt back, pretending that his aunt was watching him. He was conflicted and scared that his only friend was actually the same as everyone else in his life, and at the mere age of five he had no idea how to deal with it.


	5. Harry and the First Move

It was Wednesday afternoon and the rest of the residents of Number 4 Privet Drive had dispersed to their various activities: Vernon to a poker game at Number 12's house, Petunia to the Gardening Club in Number 7's, and Dudley to a playdate with Piers Polkiss, who lived at Number 5. Harry was doing the dishes.

The sink in the kitchen had a window above it with a clear view to the backyard, and through it Harry could see Bolt nosing around as one did if one were a black and blue creature named Bolt in wait of a friend. Harry sighed. Since reading that book his head was a very twisted and bewildering place to be—the book had said that his new friend was capable of some very cruel things. Bolt seemed harmless to Harry, but could it just be an act, like when Dudley would sometimes offer Harry candy only to snatch it back at the last moment?

Well, there was only one thing to do. The book had, in one of the randomly read passages, also mentioned that Pokemon could perform moves. It had a list in the back of a lot of different moves and the different ways in which they were deadly. The entry on Shinx had mentioned that they could 'Tackle' innately, one of the least deadly of all the moves (one would only be half killed) so Harry would start with that. Resolved, the little boy marched outside.

The second he was in the backyard Bolt let out a yip and bounded over to him, nudging around Harry in search of food. The kindergartner pulled out a few rotten Cheri berries he'd salvaged from the trash, which the Shinx scarfed down in seconds. Once he had finished, Harry led his friend further into the yard, towards Sam the bush. He directed Bolt to stand in front of Sam, and then pointed at the bush.

"Tackle." Bolt cocked his head at Harry and the kindergartener leaned down and turned the Shinx's face back at the bush. "Tackle." Again, Bolt seemed confused. Harry didn't know what to do—the book said the move was innate, so why wasn't Bolt doing anything? Did that mean that Harry was right, and Bolt was harmless? As a last ditch effort, Harry mimicked attacking the tree, before repeating "Tackle" again, to no immediate response from Bolt.

Just as he was about to celebrate, Bolt leapt up from the ground and dove into the shrub paws first. Sam was destroyed. Harry gasped as Bolt looked at him for approval. So the book was right! Bolt could hurt people—kill people! But… Bolt had never tried to hurt him. With all the reasoning the five year old could muster, he figured out his next step.

Halfheartedly, slowly, Harry positioned himself in front of Bolt before pointing at his chest. "Tackle." Again, Bolt seemed confused. "Tackle, Bolt." Bolt seemed to have grasped Harry's meaning but now his face was screaming fear.

"Tackle!" Finally Bolt slowly trotted towards Harry and reluctantly butted his head against Harry's legs. The little boy fell backwards, landing with an 'oomph', and while the wind was knocked out of him he was otherwise unhurt. Bolt skidded around his body and peered at his face, whimpering.

"It's okay Bolt, I'm fine." Harry said, reaching up and scratching behind the Shinx's ears to calm it. Bolt still looked unsure, so Harry stood up and did a couple of jumping jacks to prove it. As he continued to reassure Bolt, though, he tried to consider what he had learned.

Bolt _could_ tackle, like the book said, but he had no interest tackling Harry. But… maybe it was like fighting. Harry hated it when Dudley would fight with him, but other boys at school would often get into a scuffle, and they would laugh as they fought—when the teacher went to break them up, they would always tell her they were only playing.

Harry got into position again and took a deep breath, reminding himself over and over again that Bolt didn't want to hurt him. He just had to test his hypothesis like they'd learned in science.

"Bolt, _play_ tackle." Bolt, again, seemed confused. The two stared at each other for a few seconds, before Harry repeated the order. Bolt cocked his head. Maybe he needed a demonstration like he had with the original move?

Harry charged at Bolt grabbing him and throwing him lightly into the air. Bolt squealed and landed on Harry's chest, before quickly scuttling off and nudging at Harry's side, apparently trying to make him roll over. Harry did so, and the ball of energy scampered onto his back before letting out a crow of victory. Harry gasped, enraged, and flipped over again, before chasing Bolt around the yard. Just as he was about to catch his scurrying friend he saw headlights flash against the window—the Dursleys were home.

Both the boy and the Pokemon moved simultaneously in different directions. Bolt dashed through the hole in the wall to places unknown as Harry scurried inside, barely managing to shut his cupboard door before the door opened and Uncle Vernon squeezed inside.

"Boy!"

"Yes, uncle?"

"You get your chores done?!"

"Yes, uncle."

"We'll see about that." Vernon harrumphed, before ordering his wife to make sure the freak didn't mess anything up while they were gone. Behind him Dudley whined about wanting another dessert, and Aunt Petunia scurried into the kitchen to do her 'sweet boys' bidding.

In the closet Harry contemplated what he had learned today. While the book was right and Bolt could do real damage—the decimation of the shrub, thankfully too far back for Aunt Petunia to notice, was proof of that—but Bolt didn't seem to have any desire to hurt him. Something wasn't adding up but Harry didn't know what it was. Now burdened with a headache, the five year old shoved his thoughts away, at least for a little while, and tried to get comfortable enough to go to sleep.


	6. Harry and a Little Whinging Recess

Harry sat slumped on the bench that skirted the edge of the playground. It was only around three weeks after his sixth birthday, just edging into the new school year, and he was already depressed.

It was his own fault, really. Around halfway through the last school year he'd given up on his kindergarten teacher ever giving him a chance, but he'd still held a desperate, childish hope that the next year would be better.

It was not.

His new teacher, another woman, had apparently taken a page out of his old teacher's playbook. Before the first lesson even began Harry was sent to the corner because she "saw the look he gave her".

The teacher's behavior had continued as the weeks went on, and today's unearned series of punishments culminated just a few minutes before during lunch when his new teacher saw him without food (his aunt rarely bothered to send him in with a lunch) and decided that that meant the boy thought himself above all the other students—obviously the reason Harry wasn't eating was because his aunt couldn't make him anything he thought good enough, not because he was given no choice in deciding if he got a meal at all.

Harry had been promptly marched to the bench, this bench, where he now sat brooding. What was a boy in his position to do? He'd learned to read, and could do so with significantly better comprehension and speed than any of his classmates. He could do math—and not just addition and subtraction; he'd begun edging his way, carefully, carefully, into multiplication and even simple fractions. He'd learned how plants grow and what made the tides flow. He'd learned how to cook better than many chefs, how to clean better than most maids, and how to garden better than countless groundskeepers.

It wasn't enough. It was never enough. It was time for him to give up the childish idea that his treatment could be affected by his own behavior and face the facts: his life sucked.

That didn't mean he didn't have some creature comforts, though—his largest was an actual creature: his friend Bolt, the enigmatic Shinx. While procuring food for the tiny guy was difficult, Harry had figured out how to grow many of the berries he'd pilfered away with at the store, and despite the fact that he couldn't fit through the hole at the back of the property, he'd stretched his arms out as far as he could and now had a nice garden going on just behind the Dursley's fence.

And he had his Pokemon books—stolen, like the berries—which he would pour over for hours and hours, trying to figure out which words were lies and propaganda and which were truth and reality. He'd had almost no luck figuring it out, barely being able to determine that Bolt was male between the 'deadly killer's and the 'worthless beasts' that riddled any entry on Shinx.

He nabbed a small sewing kit too, and had made an effort to patch up Dudley's own clothes when they were thrust at him for his own use. He'd also gotten into the habit of swiping any unattended coins to add to his collection—now a respectable $41.

And he knew he was in some ways lucky—he was abnormally smart, for one, which could not be said of his cousin, his aunt and uncle, or even his teachers, when it came down to it. He was also fairly athletic—Dudley's new game "Harry Hunting" ensured that. He'd even managed to stave off the worst of his hunger and his less than ideal environment by loosening his morals, and then loosening them some more, until he had a sort of daily semblance of happiness forged through hardship and hard work in the cupboard under the stairs.

It could be worse.

But that didn't make it any easier to sit on the bench as the children in front of him ran and screamed, happy and carefree and without a constant thought train running in the back of their minds— _Do I have enough food for tonight? Yes. Stole the crackers last week, and the Sitrus berry harvest just came in. Chores done? No. Must remember to iron Uncle Vernon's shirts once home. Anything else? There's a new hole in the sole of my shoe. Need to deal with it. Maybe a torn piece of a book cover in shoe as insulation? When is Uncle Vernon coming home today? It's Wednesday, so he'll be…_ —he would have loved to be them, the happy and carefree accepted children of Little Whinging, just for a minute.

The bell rang and Harry jerked, his too large shoes falling of his feet from the sudden motion. He fumbled when tying them back on, and had to race after his classmates so as to not be locked out of the classroom again.

At six years old this was his life, for better or worse, and at times he wanted almost desperately to quit but something intangible and nearly imperceptible told him to keep going, as if he were lost in a desert but that inaudible voice knew he was headed towards water. So Harry kept going, trying desperately to keep hold of the feeling—Grit? Resolve? Hope?—in the dunes of hostility that made up Little Whinging.

He smiled a little as he slipped into the classroom, assured once more of the utter irrelevance of his teacher's opinion.


	7. Harry and the Power of Persuasion

Life plodded on day after day and before long it was spring. Dew dotted the grass in the mornings and a light breeze skirted across the ground in the afternoons and the Dursleys kept on being perfectly, impeccably, normal. It was just after school, and Harry's eyes flitted to the front window of Number 4 Privet Drive from where he was currently vacuuming the living room. He wondered for a second what it would be like to run away, far away, with Bolt and never return. He shook his head and returned to work. He knew he needed the roof that his relatives provided, for all the pain it and its residents brought to the fourth occupant of Number 4 Privet Drive.

He turned the other direction and glanced through the kitchen and out that window. From where he stood he could just make out the blurry outline of Dudley. He'd gotten a new toy, a bow and arrow set, the day before, and so he was taking a break from his various video games to try to shoot trees. It would be a mess to clean up before Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia came home.

Just as he was about to turn back to work, Dudley yelled and Harry's heart stopped as he saw a foreboding blue blur disappear behind a bush.

Without a second thought Harry let go of the vacuum cleaner and sprinted into the yard, dimly hearing the machine bump into a chair and fall over behind him. In the yard Dudley had already made it all the way to the other side of the yard and was peering inquisitively behind the (thankfully regrown) bush that blocked the hole in the fence.

"Dudley!"

"What do you want, freak?" Dudley said, and just as Harry was about to answer—with what, he didn't know— Dudley continued. "You'll never guess what I just saw! I wonder what mom would think of it."

Now frantic, Harry shouted, his voice just low enough to slip by the neighbors' attentions. "You can't tell her!"

Dudley half-turned to him, an annoyed and belligerent frown on his face. "And why not?"

"Because… because only freaks see them!" Harry said desperately.

At this Dudley paused in his search and turned fully around. "What?"

"Didn't you know?" Harry laughed, an anxiety filled giggle that forced its way out of his throat. "Only freaks see them. They don't have a name," (better not to give Dudley one that would slip out while he wasn't paying attention), "but they're a sign of madness. I can see them, which is why I'm a freak."

Now Dudley looked worried. "I'm a freak?!" Harry struggled to hold back a relieved grin. He had him now.

"Well, have you seen them before?" Harry asked.

"No!" Dudley cried. He was becoming hysterical, jerking back and forth as if to watch out for another to come and prove he was a freak like his cousin.

"Then it's okay." Harry said soothingly. Dudley glanced at him, unsure but ready to believe. "It is! As long as it doesn't happen again, we can just keep it between us. No one has to know you're a freak, okay?"

Dudley nodded, before frantically backing up towards the house, refusing to turn away from the hole in the fence which had to him nearly brought his doom. As he approached the door the bow that he seemed to have forgotten he was holding banged against the siding and Dudley yelped, dropping the offending weapon and running inside faster than he'd moved in his life.

Harry sighed and moved to start clearing up the yard. He didn't like what he had just done—he felt sick to his stomach for spreading lies after trying for so long to glean even the slightest bit of truth from the doublespeak of the people of Little Whinging, and now he was two-faced himself. He tried to reason with himself, reciting the reasons why it was necessary, but that didn't make it any easier to deal with.

As he eased himself into bed that night he stared at his filched, pilfered, and permanently borrowed possessions. He closed his eyes to escape the nagging feeling of wrongdoing, but that only brought a vision Dudley's terrified face. He shook his head and tossed, then turned, trying in vain to fall asleep before finally abandoning the effort and staring at the ceiling.

In the dark in the little cupboard under the stairs of Number four, Privet Drive, Surrey a little boy's whisper could be heard making a promise that he would do anything to keep.

"I might have to do bad things sometimes, but I swear I'll never become like my Aunt or Uncle or Dudley, and do bad things just because I want to. I can be better than that, I _am_ better than that, and I know it."

It wasn't a perfect promise, and it didn't turn him into a knight of the light, but the resolve in his voice also ensured he'd never slip into the shadows of ignorance and sadism. It wasn't the promise of a hero, but it did create a line so imperviable to the little boy who made it that it may as well have been chipped into marble. He wasn't light, but he'd never be dark.


	8. Harry and What Dreams May Come

Harry woke up gasping. It was dark and gloomy in his cupboard, and while there was technically no way for him to know what time it was, the now seven year old did know it was much too early.

It was one of those dreams again—a dream which skirted the edge of disbelief and made him feel jubilant and lost at the same time. This one featured a man looking much like a grown Harry and an odd creature with blue-red wings and a white face. The man, who was carrying Harry, straddled the creature and called out, though the words were indiscernible. A woman, only a few feet away but still too blurry to make out in the dream, said something back and all of a sudden another creature, a giant orange one with wings, appeared next to her. She climbed on it and took off, into the sky, with the man and Harry taking off right behind her.

Harry could still hear a younger, smaller, version of himself laughing as the dream faded and the feeling of the rough cotton against his skin and the dripping faucet—the kitchen sink always leaked—came back into focus.

It was not a dream he had often, but there were many 'happy dreams' and taken altogether he tended to have about one a month.

Truthfully, Harry didn't know how to deal with them, how to deal with the giddiness that seemed to come so routinely in the time spent in Morpheus' care. Typically the day after a dream he felt off center, out of touch with the world around him, and he would lash out more easily. Every part of his day to day life seemed to hurt a little more on those days. But he still couldn't shake the anticipation for the dreams; no matter the consequences the few seconds of bliss always seemed worth it.

His heart finally calmed, Harry slumped and tried to debate the merits of going back to sleep as far above him, well out of sight, the dawn of a new day broke across a black sky.


	9. Harry and the Field of Vision

Harry yawned as he and Dudley filed into their classroom. After the dream last night he'd been unable to fall back asleep, and had stayed in a sort of semiconscious limbo until the sound of Dudley's cries for help brushing his teeth alerted him to the start of a new day.

At the front of the classroom the teacher, this year a male, was marking a list every time a child came through the door. Harry didn't mind this teacher—while he was certainly not nice to Harry, he also didn't use the seven year old as the scapegoat to any unfortunate events that occurred in the classroom. At most he could be called disinterested, which was fine with Harry.

After everyone had found their seats the teacher put down the clipboard and moved to the front of the classroom. Whenever he addressed the class he always did it in a drawling monotone from his desk—a number of the students in the class currently had a theory that was the only location and way he could speak.

"Alright, class. Today we have region-mandated check-ups, so you are to head to the gym and stand in line and do what you're told. If you're not back by lunch you will serve a detention. Go."

All of the kids who had just shuffled into their seats shuffled out of them and made their way across the building to the gym.

In the gym, a large square room just at the edge of the school, one long line looped around the entirety of the floor in a spiral. At the end of the line two adults sat, one testing students for hearing and the other for eyesight. Harry got in the very back of the line, far away from Dudley, who, with Piers Polkiss, was attempting to cut in front of the fifth graders. It wasn't going well.

By the time Harry's turn came he had been there an hour and he knew he would be the last back to the classroom. He sat in front of the hearing adult's table and she hooked a set of headphones onto him, before telling him to raise his head if he heard anything and pressing a bunch of buttons. While it was a bit hard to hear over the drone of the still waiting first graders and kindergartners, he apparently did fine enough to pass and was sent to the next desk.

It was there that problems occurred.

His eyesight, apparently, sucked. It was so bad that the lady first thought he was joking and began to berate him before one of his classmates, Piers of all people, who was loitering in the gym to avoid going back to class, piped up and said that Harry couldn't read the blackboard at the front of the class either.

The lady still thought Harry was joking, though, so she made him pick a pair of glasses from the free box rather than actually write him up for a prescription. It was probably better that way—Harry couldn't conceive of a world where Aunt Petunia actually gave him something even moderately expensive of her own accord. It took him ten minutes, but he finally found a pair that didn't make his head hurt and improved his vision. They were metal circle frames, painted black and with one lens slightly chipped at the upper right edge. They were beautiful.

And, as it turned out, so was so much of the rest of the world: the trees, the flowers, the berries, the world in general was so vibrant and bright. Even as he took a beating from Uncle Vernon for drawing attention to himself at the checkup he couldn't help but be in awe of the entirely new world that had opened up to him.

He wondered what else was just outside his periphery.


	10. Harry and the Spring Break

It was spring break, and since Harry had gotten his new glasses he'd taken to routinely walking around the neighborhood. This served three purposes: first, he was able to see an entire world of nature and clarity which had once been unavailable to him. Second, it kept him out of the Dursley's house. This benefit could never be discounted. Third, it allowed him to do something that he would have never before dreamed of: meeting the neighbors.

Admittedly, Harry was not meeting his own neighbors. He had, in the past, been introduced to everyone from Number 1 to Number 24, all the way at the end of Privet Drive. Not one liked him—Aunt Petunia got on well enough with the lot that they all believed her propaganda. However, after a particularly harsh argument with the crazy lady who lived on Wisteria Walk Aunt Petunia stopped making any effort to get to know the neighbors on the other streets.

The way the neighborhood was set up, each street was exactly parallel to all the others and had 24 nearly identical houses, 12 per side, lining the road. At the far end of each road stood the same street running perpendicularly, and at the near end more streets branched off, always at ninety degree angles, to form the commercial district of Little Whinging. Harry was also vaguely aware that after the commercial district was the industrial one, where his uncle worked as a manager at Grunning's Grains, financial department.

This was not where Harry went.

Harry went to Astilbe Way, where, beginning with Number 1, he went to each house and introduced himself as Harry James Potter, eager worker. He marched up and down the lane, asking for any task and accepting pennies for jobs that he knew most people would be given dollars for.

Then he went to the next lane and did it all over again.

He skipped Privet Drive.

For the next two weeks (the length of spring break at Grogory's Elementary School), he cleaned gutters, weeded gardens, power-washed porches, painted fences, scrubbed rust off of mailboxes, walked dogs… from dawn to dusk he worked, saving every nickel, dime, and penny he earned.

And at each house that he worked he made sure to preform each job to perfection. Gradually the tone of the neighborhood when speaking about him shifted. "Maybe he's not so bad…" said Number 5 Camellia Crescent to Number 8 Camellia Crescent. "My gutters have never been so clean!" exclaimed Number 1 Peony Parade to Number 2 Astilbe Way. "Should've guessed something was up. That Vernon Dursley's always had a smarmy way about him." Grumbled Number 4 Wisteria Walk to his wife. Slowly, slowly, he began to prove his worth to the town of Little Whining.

No longer was he stared at suspiciously as he commuted from one job to another. No longer did mothers with their children cross the street at the sight of him. Now fathers gruffly muttered about how _their_ sons were never so well behaved while he straightened trash cans up and down streets after a particularly harsh windstorm. Now grandmothers said thank you when he offered to help carry their groceries instead of eying him like he was asking them to do something to repulsive to mention in polite company.

At first he was worried that his aunt or uncle would question him about where he'd been all day, but he'd quickly found that none of his clients cared enough to actually confront his relatives and all the Dursleys cared about was if the chores were done. In fact, Harry was reasonably certain that they were under the impression that he stayed in his cupboard whenever he was out of their sight. In fact, so long as he was not directly in front of them they seemed rather apathetic to his presence as a whole. It would be very interesting to see how they reacted to him _after_ they found out he (totally accidently, he promises!) made the neighborhood question their normality.

It was a very successful spring break.


	11. Harry and the Library

After a year with public support swayed somewhat towards him, Harry decided to push his luck and visit the public library.

A stout building which bordered the commercial district on the residential side, Harry had never before dared to enter the establishment. He'd overheard other students in his class talk about how they'd not been allowed back for a month or so after this or that incident, and Harry also knew that up until recently his mere existence was considered enough reason for any maltreatment he received.

As he slowly mounted the steps which led to the front door Harry took a deep breath. He could do this, he told himself. There was no reason for the librarian not to let him in. He opened the door.

A woman, well past her prime, manned the massive desk which took up nearly the entire hallway. She looked up as she entered and pursed her lips in obvious disapproval—most likely at his clothes, but quite possibly because of his reputation too. Nonetheless she quickly ran through the library rules in the same bored monotone as Harry was absolutely sure everyone before him had heard too: don't damage the books, if you want to check one out you have to leave your name, absolute silence at all times. Finished, she waved him away.

Harry spent the next hour reading every science book (his favorite subject) that he could. He absorbed physics, biology, and chemistry with an avidness that he'd never been able to immerse himself in before and was soon lost to the way of books. Science books, which very clearly stated how this or that or the other thing was tested and, for many of the experiments, how to test it yourself, were much easier to deal with than the biased history textbooks or propagandizing English ones.

Just as he was returning one book and about to pick out a new one he heard a low shout from the 'employees only' hallway. Too curious for his own good, Harry crept closer.

"I don't care how the error was made, fix it! These books were meant for the rest of Okoku, not us!" A man shouted. "What use would we have for—" Here his voice turned mocking—"How to train your Pokemon team!"

"I'm sorry sir! I have no idea how the mistake occurred!" Another voice, this one younger and more anxious, responded.

"I know you don't know! Just burn the books, Adams. Tell the Okokus that it's their own fault. They need our crops too much to argue." The older man grumbled.

"Yes sir!" The younger man shouted, and then footsteps, one slow and steady and the other in a rush and clumsy, moved away from the door in opposite directions.

It took Harry half a second to decide to follow the scurrying feet. They obviously knew quite a bit that he didn't, and given how they were about to destroy the books that came from 'the rest of Okoku', it was obvious they wanted to keep it that way.

The first staff only hallway bled into a second, and then a third—a maze of white corridors and plastic-tiled floors and windowless doors far larger than the library proper.

Harry made sure to stay just out of sight, always one turn behind the scurrying man, until at last he entered a room. Harry stopped and looked around for a place to hide until the man came out. There was a giant wooden structure leaning across the side of the hallway, painted in oranges and browns. Harry vaguely remembered it from the Smeltings graduation last year—it was the only actual secondary school in Little Whinging, and Harry already been told he would not be given the privilege of attending. He would instead be sent to Stonewall Labors, a company which provided farms with the manpower needed to harvest and weed and fertilize.

Regardless, Harry would be able to use the wood board to hide, so long as the man didn't look too closely. Harry ducked behind the rectangle, and about fifteen minutes later the man appeared again, muttering to himself about getting the generator ready as he looked down at a clipboard and scurried down another hallway.

Harry slipped in just as the door to the room closed.


	12. Harry and the Book

There were cardboard boxes everywhere. Stacks upon stacks lined the shelves that made up the walls of what could only have been a supply closet, and there were still a number of boxes which were tossed onto the ground because they couldn't fit on the crowded racks. One of the boxes was half open, and red covers caught the light from the single bulb illuminating the room in just the right way, drawing the only occupant of the closet to them.

Harry carefully eased open the second flap and looked down. It was the book the man had mentioned earlier—How to Train Your Pokemon Team—and had "Ages: 8-10" printed in a giant circle on the lower right of the cover. Harry flipped through the book—there were pages and pages of Pokemon just as his pilfered books had, but unlike them these had Pokemon smiling and playing and posing with humans. It was more than Harry could have ever imagined.

He glanced at the other boxes, but the rest were sealed with a clear tape that would make any attempts at opening them obvious. He turned back to the open box. There were stacks more of the training book. He listened for footsteps but heard none. He looked at the book again. There were 10 chapters. Were 10 chapters of an 'Okoku' book good enough to risk getting caught?

Five minutes later Harry, empty handed, nodded to the librarian as he left the establishment. Immediately after leaving the building he dashed to its side, looking up and down the building's wall until he found a half-open small window, the kind that were always in bathrooms, before diving into the bushes the lined the edge of the library until at last he pulled a book, barely damaged, from the twigs.

It had a shiny red cover.


	13. Harry and the Okoku Way

The preface to "How to Train Your Pokemon Team" reminded parents that having your child train their team on their own prior to school was highly discouraged, and they should always be present when their child was working with Pokemon, but Harry flipped right past it and into chapter one. Spanning 10 chapters altogether, the book stated that it explained everything it thought a young trainer in Okoku needed to know about training. Chapter one's focus? Obedience.

An entire chapter, 1/10th of the book, was devoted to how to force your Pokemon to listen to you. Harry got the same gut feeling as he had when he'd guessed what Pokemon meat was but forced himself to continue.

The next few pages made what little hope he had left disappear.

It could have been worse, he supposed—it could have advocated for something like his home life. But it wasn't good. Apparently battling a wild Pokemon you want to win the obedience of with an already domesticated Pokemon was considered the way to go. By briefly flipping through the rest of the book Harry was aware that battling was basically the favored entertainment of 'Okoku', and to some extent he understood that: play fighting with Bolt was always fun, and so was playing football in gym class.

His issue was more that the book advocated for fighting until the other Pokemon couldn't as what was basically the sole way of obtaining a Pokemon. It did outline another method, but that one was arguably worse—if one did not already have a Pokemon, then one could repeatedly hit the desired Pokemon with rocks while plying it with food until it stayed in a pokeball.

Pokeballs were the subject of Chapter Two. Harry took a deep breath and dived in.

According to the book, pokeballs were the one way to ensure continued support of your Pokemon. A good trainer, the book expounded, keeps his Pokemon in their pokeballs as often as possible because Pokemon kept there have been found to be more inclined to listen to their owners. The book continued listing the various benefits of pokeballs—slowed metabolism, small carrying size and weight, etc. but Harry couldn't stop thinking about how the book thought the best way to get your Pokemon to listen to you was to spend no time with it.

Harry, squinting at the pages of the hardcover in the dimly lit cupboard under the stairs of Number 4 Privet Drive, couldn't help but relate it to his circumstances. Whenever Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon locked him in his cupboard he hated it. Hated the cramped space and the lack of food and the lack of sunlight with all his might. And by the time he was finally let out he couldn't help be obedient in fear that he would be thrown back in again.

Harry didn't care about the 'partially suspended time' in the pokeballs. He couldn't imagine Pokemon didn't feel the same.

Just as he was about to write of this chapter, too, as a loss a small extension piece squeezed into the margin of the current page caught his eye.

"Apricorn Balls" It was labeled. It started by talking about how apricorn balls were not commonly used nowadays, but had in the time before pokeballs been the most common method of carrying Pokemon. Weaker than pokeballs, larger than them, and without nearly as slowed metabolism (making them more expensive in the long run), they'd fallen out of favor quickly once the mechanical version came to market.

Nonetheless they caught Harry's eye. They were made of natural ingredients and were far easier to escape from but many Pokemon seemed to go into them more willingly than they would a normal pokeball. A specific Apricorn ball, the friend ball, was even thought to be so comfortable that Pokemon would literally rifle through trainers backpacks in search of one.

Harry grinned and imagined getting one for Bolt—not as Bolt's owner but as his friend, an equal. He idly wondered why humans were unable to be captured—he was sure that due to the suspended animation some ageless beauty seekers had tried.

Chapter 3 was about typing and was mostly reiteration of facts he already knew from the biased books he'd appropriated, but without the undercurrent of fearmongering and with much more detailed reasoning as to why typing worked the way it did—each 'type' apparently constituted a specific form of energy and whichever energies a Pokemon was primarily made of determined their typing as well as which energies would hurt it more or less. It was so far Harry's favorite section of the book.

Chapter 4 described abilities, but it didn't mention which ones Shinx could have, so Harry speed read through it.

Chapter 5 was another favorite of Harry's because it was all about Pokemon health and happiness and discussed at length feeding, healing, and playing with Pokemon. While Harry had no way of obtaining a 'potion' he did resolve to be on the lookout for the 'revival herb' which was pictured and described in an extension (he was beginning to like extensions more than the main content). Harry was also pleased to learn that both Oran berries and Sitrus berries were considered acceptable substitutes for potions, even if they did not work so completely.

Chapter 6 went on about battle etiquette and the different types of trainer battles. While it was interesting in its variety, it wasn't immediately useful, so Harry skimmed through it and reminded himself to read more later—he especially liked it because it had pictures of Pokemon battling, and with one look Harry could tell that the Pokemon were actually enjoying themselves, which wasn't necessarily true in the obedience chapter.

Chapter 7 was about strengthening Pokemon. Harry paid more attention to this one. It discussed how important a strong body was for Pokemon—both in battle and in terms of longevity—and Harry resolved for both Bolt and he, although trainers exercising with their partners wasn't mentioned—to begin regularly working out. It also discussed frequent battling. It emphasized the importance of battling wild Pokemon—the book made it seem as if they were around every corner—in order to build muscle memory behind moves. What with Little Whinging's apparent lack of living Pokemon besides Bolt, Harry figured they'd have to skip that part.

Chapter 8 was all about teaching Pokemon moves, but considering step one to training your Pokemon in a new move was showing them another Pokemon performing it either in real life or through video, Harry felt alright about skipping it to go back later.

Chapter 9 discussed the PSS, or Pokemon Storage System, which was apparently present in "all Pokemon Centers", not that Harry had any idea what those were. This was another chapter that he barely glanced at.

Chapter 10, though, he lingered on. It was simply labeled "Gyms". It began by reminding its young viewers that if they were accepted to a Pokemon Training School such as the illustrious Spoinkperl Academy then there was no reason to read this chapter. As Harry felt rather confident in saying he wasn't accepted, he read on.

Apparently there was a huge Rose League held every year, and if one had the necessary seven "gym badges" to enter and one's Pokemon performed well in the league the trainer would generally get promotions, job offers, and discounts at a much steeper rate than if they hadn't entered. The book defended the practice by arguing that a well-trained team was an obvious sign of one's ability to succeed, but Harry wasn't sure if he bought it. What interested him, though, was how the book discussed training as a career. Apparently for every win a trainer got they were to be given 10% of the defeated trainer's 'on hand money'.

This, Harry thought, could be his way to a life outside of Little Whinging. But should he go?


	14. Harry and the Beginning of the End

Harry lay in the backyard with Bolt by his side, staring up at the dark grey clouds which blanketed the sky with its comforting bleakness. The problem, he felt, was that neither choice was completely good or completely bad.

Staying here, for instance, left him forced to continue to contend with the Dursleys and school and a lack of a currently foreseeable future.

However, it also left him with remarkably more kind neighbors than the year prior and the recent addition of a possibility of a future if he kept on showing he was worth it.

On the other hand, Okoku offered him a much better theoretical future, safety from the Dursleys, and quite possibly friends or at least adults who saw him as something other than a freak or great nearly free labor.

But Okoku was riddled with issues too—how to escape, how to ensure he wasn't sent back, and how to support both himself and Bolt were all arguing hotly against leaving the known danger for the unknown perils of a life outside the straight roads and white picket fences which marked Little Whinging as his home.

In the end, as he stared at the coming storm while Bolt, worn out from their earlier play, panted beside him, he knew what it came down to. It wasn't curiosity, or his own future, or the end of years of abuse that cinched it. His choice to leave all came down to just one thing: Bolt's safety.

Now all he had to do was figure out how.


	15. Harry and the Empty Hourglass

Harry James Potter, a black haired, green eyed bespectacled boy of no more than 10, sat in the very back of the 5th Grade Classroom in Grogory's Elementary School, Little Whinging. His desk looked as if it was built when dinosaurs still roamed the earth and was ready to be thrown out by the time the first humans crawled around on their hands and knees. His clothes and glasses weren't in a much better state, and his haircut looked as if it had been performed by a toddler with safety scissors and an unattended razor—simultaneously.

He sat with perfect posture, a pencil stub with just enough lead left to be usable in his hand, ready for the next lesson.

"Today," Said the teacher facing the board as she scribbled out the lesson's name, "we will learn about Pokemon."

Harry's pencil dropped.

The teacher turned to the projector and after a bit of shuffling put on the first slide. It was a picture of a… Skarmory, if Harry remembered correctly. She removed it and put on another picture—a Chandelure. She switched out the slides once more, putting up the one picture that sealed Harry's fate. There—blown up in a square about a meter tall and a meter wide, was the very same picture Harry had seen all those years ago in the school library.

As Harry stared, despairing, the teacher re-centered the picture of a mother Luxray and her babies. At the other side of the classroom, in the middle of the room, Dudley stared too, before turning to Harry in confusion.

Then the teacher started talking. She explained about how dangerous Pokemon were, and about how Little Whinging was a safe haven from them. She explained about all the different ways a Pokemon could kill you without even trying. She detailed exactly how illegal attempting to hide a Pokemon was. Then she added that anyone who turned a Pokemon in would get a reward.

Dudley turned to look at Harry and his eyes gleamed.

Damn.

In the past three years, since Harry had decided to leave Little Whinging and everything that came with it behind, the youngest resident of Number 4 Privet Drive had been busy.

He'd memorized the fateful book which had opened the door to Okoku. He stole more food and made both himself and Bolt exercise until even their very bones hurt. He figured out how to have the Shinx practice moves and then had him do so religiously—Bolt liked that part. He read every book on money management and living in the wild (for he knew it would be a while until he could afford an apartment even if everything went to plan). He continued to collect money from doing jobs for the neighbors, despite not knowing if Little Whinging and Okoku shared the same currency. And he plotted how to escape.

But by his last estimate he still had months before he'd be ready, and Dudley knew now and would definitely report Bolt. He had to leave—yesterday.

The second the bell rang—and Harry was never so grateful for the school day to be at an end—he dashed out of the classroom, swinging his threadbare backpack on his back as he flew down the steps at the front of the school and swerved towards Privet Drive. He skidded past the commercial district, leapt between shoppers, and sailed across crosswalks. In record time he was back at his relative's house. It took him two seconds—one second too long—to open the door and then he was inside the thankfully unoccupied house. He yanked open his cupboard door and grabbed everything he could, before taking the steps two at a time to the bathroom where he raided his relative's toiletries, before jumping over the railing to do the same to the kitchen.

Fifteen minutes after school ended Harry ran at the back of the white picket fence lining Number 4 Privet Drive, ramming into it at an angle going full speed. The wood splintered, shooting off at every distance but giving him plenty of room to get by. He thanked what little luck he had that his house was at the edge of the neighborhood and knelt to collect what berries he could.

By this point Bolt had heard him and came trotting up with his head cocked to the side, utterly bemused at his friend's behavior.

"Hey Bolt, we gotta go—we gotta go now. Dudley found out an we—" Harry grabbed the last berry. "Now! We have to go now!" Harry turned and Bolt, just barley large enough that Harry couldn't carry him, followed as his partner dashed into the miles of grain that lined every side of Little Whinging.

The two ran until every muscle in their legs burned with lactic acid, and then they ran some more. When Harry's legs finally gave out, unable to carry out even the façade of usability, Harry crawled forwards. When Bolt tried to stop, whimpering in pain, Harry urged him on. The duo had to stop twice for Harry to puke from the exertion.

Finally, hours upon hours later, when not only had the sun called it quits but the moon had too, when the first glimmers of a new day fought back the blackness in the distance, Harry and Bolt finally reached a fence. It was tall and composed entirely of wires linked together into chains and at the top barbed wire was spun in a sort of circle. Harry crawled up the fence with the last of his strength, with Bolt gnawing on his shoe's heel in order to even be able to follow, and ignored the gashes the top of the fence caused as he reached behind him and tossed Bolt over. Seconds later Harry followed too—in a dead faint, with a slight breeze being the only reason he felt forward and not back. Bolt followed him into the blackness soon after, the two refugees lying in an uncomfortable pile of limbs as the sun won the battle for control of the sky above them.

They were out.


	16. Harry and the Massive Shadow

Harry sat up suddenly, jerking awake from a deep sleep. Beside him Bolt squirmed away from Harry's movement, pushing his face further into the dirt. Where were they? What time was it? Why—

Just as instantaneously as he woke up Harry remembered the events of the past day. He remembered his teacher's lesson, he remembered Dudley's reaction to it, and he remembered his mad sprint out of Little Whinging with Bolt by his side. As his brain fully woke up so too did his body. His legs screamed in agony, and he could feel the scratches that were carved all over his body by the barbed wire fence as if they were made of fire.

He forced himself to take off the backpack he'd slept on the night before, aching, and robotically sifted through the pockets until he found the contents of Aunt Petunia's medicine cabinet. He found one that said pain relief and took four at once in a dry swallow. His hacking woke up Bolt, who startled and looked around for danger.

About an hour or so later they were on their way. Harry, despite knowing that rations were limited, had allowed himself and Bolt a full breakfast (or, based on the position of the sun, lunch) before setting out. They'd gorged themselves on berries of all shapes and sizes and a full water bottle each as Harry wrapped gauze over his wounds. Now, with full stomachs and somewhat healed bodies, they were beginning their journey down the road, with no idea how long it would take to get there, or, for that matter, where 'there' was.

"We're free, Bolt. That's what's important." The boy told his friend as it whimpered slightly from the bruises on the pads of its feet. Harry glanced back at the fence and as he stared at the wheat fields behind it he felt the full weight of Dudley, Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon, and all the other residents and customs of Little Whinging lift off of him. He grinned, uncontrolled and broad, for the first time in his memory. "We're free."

It took two days for the scenery to change. Prior to that the sparse trees scattered in dirt and clover on either side of the chipped and faded grey asphalt road had begun to blend together in the eyes of the boy, seemingly as similar as the houses of Little Whinging. The pair had survived as well as they could on what few resources Harry had managed to gather, and scrounged when it wasn't enough. Harry was never more thankful for delaying the trip as long as he had—in the intervening years he'd learned many survival tips, like how to start a fire or recognize edible plants, that became invaluable as he and Bolt went forward. Nonetheless, it was difficult for the two to go through the woods obviously outside of Little Whinging and still not see any Pokemon, and humans, any sign of non-plant life at all.

But, finally, just as he'd begun to despair his earlier decision to leave for all that it was necessary, Bolt saw something in the distance. He yelped from his position well ahead of Harry, at the very crest of a large and gently sloped hill that the road bent over, and darted back, nearly vibrating with happiness. He grabbed lightly at the bottom of one of Harry's pant legs and tried to tug the boy forward.

"All right, all right." Harry laughed. He picked up the pace, but Bolt wanted him to go still faster. Finally Harry got close enough and near enough that he could see it—there, far in the distance, was tall broad grass. It stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, a vibrant blatant green, and stood about the height of Harry's chest, just as had been described in the Okoku book. In front of it was a massive sign, just barely visible from his distance—"Okoku Region". Harry shouted and ran forward, with Bolt nipping at his heels, just as excited as Harry was.

As they neared the mass of green Harry slowed again. The road stopped here, fading into two dirt lines exactly the width of the average tire and evenly spaced apart, worn somewhat down from infrequent travel. Small shoots of grass had sprouted in the packed dirt, uncaring of the possible danger of a future car.

About five meters away from the meadow Harry stopped altogether. Bolt stopped beside him and cocked his head in confusion.

"What's… what do you… do you think… do you think we're near Pokemon?" Harry finally breathed out, trying to not be too eager. The idea of Pokemon had in some ways become his salvation—Bolt, his dreams, the book: they were all centered on Pokemon. The idea that he was close to more than one of them felt so surreal that he simply couldn't believe that he might actually meet another, not after all the good the first had brought.

Bolt moved forwards a few steps and started sniffing. Finally he turned to the left, staring straight at an otherwise unremarkable patch of grass. Just as Harry was about to ask what he scented the patch moved. Another second passed and then without warning a Rattata, mentioned in "Deadly Pokemon" as being harbingers of disease, darted out, headed straight for an acorn dropped from one of the trees. The second it grabbed the food it spun around and darted right back into the thick foliage. Harry laughed.

"Come on, Bolt! We've made it to Okoku!"

The two friends dove into the grass headfirst, ready for anything it could throw at them. It took the rest of the day until they'd crossed the first field of grass. They'd stumbled across wild Pokemon only a few times, but when the initially tense Pokemon saw Bolt they relaxed. While a number still wanted to fight, they also didn't chase Harry and Bolt when they took off to avoid battle.

It wasn't a perfect system, and Harry was sure that at least some of the Pokemon's behaviors were based off of something Bolt said or did that Harry didn't notice or simply couldn't interpret, but it worked. They stayed safe as they continued to venture deeper and deeper into Okoku territory. As the evening was beginning to change to dusk, though, that changed.

They'd just stumbled out of the grass into a small clearing just as the sun began to set. Harry, tired, had lain down and Bolt had curled up into a ball next to him. The little boy wrapped a protective hand around Bolt and closed his eyes, ready for a good night's sleep, when the tiny body next to him suddenly shifted and began to growl. Harry sat up, terrified that a large Pokemon had decided that the two were its next meal, or worse, that somehow the Little Whinging Police had found them all the way out here—a fear which had plagued him since they'd left his relative's house. He turned, fighting between the need to know and the want to not, and looked to where Bolt was staring. There, straight across the clearing, was a massive body, over two times larger than the grass to its back. The being was entirely shrouded in black: there wasn't enough sunlight for any features to be discerned. The mass moved towards Harry and the boy screamed, voice shrill and loud against the silence of the fading day.

Was this it? Was all his effort, his work, his struggles about to be made meaningless?

Was this the end?

* * *

If you have any questions/comments/concerns/ideas put them in a review and I'll try to answer/read/explain/incorporate them.

Also, the world surrounding this is becoming... unruly. If any of you either want to be or want to recommend a beta for the story, that would be much appreciated.


	17. Sequel

Sequel Up: Harry and the Mystery Egg.


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